During the day that I was detained at the Niagara Suspension Bridge Hotel, I had the company of about a dozen other travellers, snow-bound like myself. The storm was too violent to admit of anyone going outside; there was, therefore, nothing for us to do, except to sit round the stove in front of the bar and talk away the time. Everybody contributed what he could to the general stock of amusement, by making or repeating jokes, or telling stories and adventures, the latter, probably, sometimes participating in the nature of the former. I was called upon to give a detailed account of my run to the Plains and Rocky Mountains. When every other subject was exhausted, politics of course came up. This, as is usual, led to loud denunciations of what is called ‘the corruption’ of all the departments of the Government. ‘But, Sir,’ said one of the party to me, in a determined and fierce voice, ‘the darndest corruption on this side creation is that of the British Government. You give your Cabinet ministers very little, but they all get rich. There are plenty of people who want their help. It was this that enabled Lord Palmerston, during his long official life, to become so enormously wealthy. We Americans keep ourselves well posted in these matters. We have to transact too much business with your public men not to know what we have to do.’ This was from the politician of the party.
‘Sir,’ said another to me, ‘no man can be blamed for travelling in this weather, because no one would stir in it unless he had a big occasion.’ The theory was plausible, but no one present acknowledged that he had himself been drawn away from home by ‘a big occasion.’
In the evening I went into the ladies’ drawing-room. I here found one English and two American ladies. They were all young, and all appeared to be on their wedding tour. One of the American ladies cried herself to sleep because her husband had left her that he might play at cards in the gentlemen’s drawing-room. The other took her husband’s absence for the same purpose very philosophically, consoling herself with a kind of dominoes she called ‘muggins.’
CHAPTER XX.
EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT AT TORONTO—CANADIAN ARGUMENTS AGAINST COMMON SCHOOLS—A CANADIAN’S OPINION ON SECULAR SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND—HOW THE CANADIAN’S OBJECTIONS ARE MET IN THE UNITED STATES—UPPER CANADIANS NOT YET A PEOPLE—ADVANTAGES POSSESSED BY UPPER CANADA—SERVICE AT THE ROMANIST AND ANGLICAN CATHEDRALS—UNMANNERLY BEHAVIOUR PERMITTED ON CANADIAN RAILWAYS—BADNESS OF THEIR CARRIAGES—WHY CANADA IS NOT ‘THE LAND OF FREEDOM’—YANKEE SMARTNESS IN TRAIN-DRIVING—PICTURESQUENESS OF VERMONT—TRAVELLING ON AMERICAN RAILWAYS NOT FATIGUING.
Educational Department at Toronto.
At Toronto I was taken over the educational department for Upper Canada. It is very ambitiously housed, and combines so many objects, namely a general library, a collection and depôt of school-books and of school apparatus, galleries of art, chiefly for copies of celebrated pictures and pieces of sculpture, and normal schools, that I spent two hours in going through it. On my making some observation on the cost of the building, and of its contents, I was told that it might appear that too much had been spent on the department, but that it had designedly been carried out on this scale, and the building made imposing, and the galleries added, in order to give dignity and elevation to the idea of education in the minds of the people. A hope had been entertained that if the normal schools were brought under the same roof, a better class of young persons would offer themselves for the position of teachers: this hope had not been disappointed.
The arguments and facts which are in favour of the Canadian Common School system are to be heard at the department, the officers of which appeared to be able and zealous men. The system, however, has been very far from securing that unanimity which to the south of the great lakes exists on the subject of common schools. I will state this difference of opinion, and some of its causes, in the words of one of the leading men in the province, used in conversation with me on the subject. He said, ‘that throughout Upper Canada their common schools had quite failed in winning anything at all like general approval. The Grand Jury of Toronto have for several years past made a presentment against the system, hanging the expression of their dissatisfaction on the peg of their visitation and inspection of the jail. Their dissatisfaction is shared very largely by the upper class, who pay a heavy tax for the schools, and yet find that those for whose benefit and elevation they were willing to be taxed do not send their children to the schools; but that, instead of this, the well-to-do tradesmen who could very well afford to pay for their children’s education are now provided with it, almost gratuitously, at the expense of the community.
‘Some towns in Upper Canada, as for instance Hamilton, have all along refused to establish common schools.
A Canadian on Common Schools.